BalletX 20th Anniversary Retrospective Review
November 1 & 7, 2025 | Suzanne Roberts Theatre – Philadelphia, PA, USA
In BalletX’s 20th Anniversary Retrospective, each snippet is concentrated – a burst of energy and artistry so lush and thrilling you can almost taste it.
Taken together, it’s a banquet of brilliance, a sensory indulgence that shows BalletX has spent twenty years refining the recipe for breathtaking contemporary dance.
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BalletX 20th Anniversary Retrospective Review
Enjoyed in two parts over two consecutive weekends at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, the BalletX 20th Anniversary Retrospective is a twenty-course feast: ten choreographed bites from each decade, each excerpt a decadent morsel of movement.
BalletX executes ballet at the highest technical and artistic level; lines drawn with precision, technique executed with clarity. And then expanded, stretched, and infused with contemporary daring, transforming classical beauty into something fully alive. Somehow BalletX achieves this again and again.
If you were a ballet dancer in the late 90s or early 00s, you’ll remember the cult-classic ballet film Center Stage (2000). In it, Jody Sawyer doesn’t fit the mold of the “ideal” ballerina – her feet are “bad,” her body unconventional. But she has something no checklist can measure: fire. She fights to find her own way, breaking free from the rigid expectations of classical ballet.
Then comes the scene everyone remembers: she swaps her polished pink pointe shoes for bold red ones. Moving to a fast-paced Jamiroquai track, she lets loose with pelvic thrusts, head rolls, and sharp contractions.
BalletX is the red shoes of the ballet world: bold, electric, and gloriously willing to color outside the lines.
Christine Cox, co-founder with Matthew Neenan, is the driving force behind it all. She calls herself a Crazy Optimist, and it’s no mere label; it’s the lens through which she propels BalletX’s daring artistic vision.
Instantly likable and charismatic, she has built a company that thrives on risk, imagination, and exploration.
Philadelphia is essential to the artistic identity of BalletX. The City of Brotherly Love is bold, wild, scrappy, and rebellious which makes it an ideal home for the company. BalletX embodies that same fearless energy, showing that ballet can be raw, edgy, and thrilling while remaining both excellent and beautiful.
The first of two evenings opens with Frequencies, a piece choreographed by Matthew Neenan that is strange, experimental, and born from a dream of delight. It channels the energy of The Smashing Pumpkins in its ability to be avant-garde, audacious, and unapologetically weird. You want to be friends with these dancers; you want to live in their world of imagination.
The fairy wings, discovered in a Walnut Street thrift shop twenty years ago, still flutter, whimsical and irreverent, reminding audiences that BalletX blends humor, history, and magic in its repertoire.
Trey McIntyre’s Big Ones, set to Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good,” is chaotic, brilliant, and darkly beautiful, a collision of self-destruction and longing. Patent leather, tall headpieces, daring lifts, inventive partnering, and precise rhythm create movement as dialogue that is just as expressive and fearless as Winehouse’s voice.
The retrospective’s centerpiece, featured in the second program, shows another facet of BalletX’s range. Presented as a world premiere, Keelan Whitmore’s Resilire is a study in endurance and connection.
Against a cool, dystopian gray, the dancers move with water-like fluidity: grounded runs, simultaneous duets, and virtuosic lifts rise, fold, and stack with breathtaking precision. Shapes shift constantly, bodies reacting to one another in real time, the choreography alive with improvisational spark.
Percussion drives the work forward with relentless momentum while Peter Weil’s ghostly, penetrating gaze cuts through the haze. The tedious, repeated banging of wood by four musicians at the end may test patience, yet the dancers never let up; the pace remains high, the energy unflagging, a showcase of stamina and the alchemy of bodies moving as one.
The performative quality of the company sets BalletX apart. Each dancer has their own spark, their own superpower, like a troupe of Avengers on stage.
In partnering, transitions flow smoothly, every movement timed to the music yet full of grit, soul, and depth. Some flirt with the audience, lock gazes, and draw you in with subtle, mischievous intent.
For example, dancer Eli Alford is notable for this performative quality. Every finger, every muscle, every tilt of the head channels the tone and feeling of the work. The repertoire moves continuously, flowing through polyrhythms and delicate nuances that turn choreography into a living narrative.
The dancers of BalletX bring good news to the world of ballet. Caili Quan’s Fancy Me, with playful, infectious energy, had the audience grinning from the iconic opening phrase “ah, sookie, sookie” while Jo Stromgren’s The Letter made me groove in my seat, something rare after decades of watching ballet.
From Silt (by Alex Ketley) to Still@Life (by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa), to the stunningly heart-wrenching duet Two People in Love Never Shake Hands (by Nicola Wills), each work has its own tone and texture, showcasing the company’s wit, courage, and musical acuity.
One piece that stayed with me was New Heights. If you remember anything about 2020, you’ll know why.
Choreographed during the pandemic by Amy Hall Garner and filmed by Elliot deBruyn, it kept the flame of ballet alive when stages went dark, proving the company’s adaptability and creativity.
The work opens with Francesca Forcella staring into the camera in front of a Chinatown mural. Dancers move through Philadelphia streets in white Keds as if to say: if you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you. Duets filmed in separate iconic cityscapes and locations captured longing, desire, and human connection from afar.
Despite the immense challenge of surviving a global pandemic, BalletX endured, and New Heights reflected that resilience.
Returning to live performance, Neenan’s Sunset, 0639 Hours, a collaboration with Rosie Langabeer and The Sunset Club, is among the company’s most exhilarating works.
Inspired by the true story of pilot Captain Edwin Musick’s 1938 trans-Pacific airmail flight, rehearsals began in 2013 when Neenan and Langabeer traveled to New Zealand, Samoa, and Hawaii to record soundscapes and gather cultural context. The result: invented instruments, percussion, mimed imbibing, slow-motion air cigarettes, and café patrons, all translated into ballet’s physical language.
The stage radiated festive, Dionysian energy, a kind of vaudevillian revelry both spirited and sly.
This wasn’t choreography alone – it was a fully realized experience that was playful, immersive, and unforgettable, ending with the full cast mouthing “Happy New Year!” Neenan later told me it was even more vibrant with live musicians.
If the evening was a multi-course meal of dance, this was dessert.
BalletX genuinely cares for its dancers and community.
The company offers 52-week contracts, rare in the dance world. Collaborations with public schools (Dance eXchange) extend BalletX’s influence beyond the stage, nurturing confidence, creativity, and life skills in thousands of students.
This isn’t just about performance; BalletX builds community, cultivates talent, and demonstrates that dance can have tangible, lasting impact.
Twenty years from now, dance scholars will discuss BalletX as they do any artist who dared to take risks. This is ballet untamed – stories that make you laugh, ache, and, yes, dance in your seat. BalletX doesn’t just push boundaries; they charge through them.
In a word: electrifying.
Featured Photo of BalletX in Keelan Whitmore’s Resilire. Photo by Vikki Sloviter.
